Difficulty over Time

[x4000]

I gotcha -- compounding percentage, sure, that does make more sense.  Still not keen on that at this time, but you never know.  It would have to be an incredibly tiny amount to work, though, at any rate.

[Sherlock]

1% would yield 2.7 x your level 1 stats at level 100, and 21000x at level 1000.

I'm sure i'm well past flogging a dead horse here.  If you wanna discuss it further, let me know.  Otherwise, i won't distract you from coming out with more awesome work ^.^

[x4000]

1% would yield 2.7 x your level 1 stats at level 100, and 21000x at level 1000.

Right -- so the game becomes unplayably large in terms of stats at level 1000, is how I read that.  Those numbers wouldn't fit on the screen anymore, and we'd have to implement an abbreviation system all over the place, etc, etc.

I'm sure i'm well past flogging a dead horse here.  If you wanna discuss it further, let me know.  Otherwise, i won't distract you from coming out with more awesome work ^.^

No worries; I don't agree on this one, but I appreciate the enthusiasm!

[The Mimic]

You know, I feel there's a much simpler solution:

Adjust the maximum area level you can access to be civlevel * 2, instead of civlevel + 10.  Then, the equivalent at level 300 of raiding level 40 regions at level 30 would be raiding level 400 regions.

That is the worst sentence, but I like how bad it is so it's staying.  A better format would be "at level 30 you raid level 40 regions, and so at level 300 you raid level 400 regions".

Anyway, that keeps difficulty relatively static.  The solution for the display of numbers getting out of hand would be to just use the k, M, etc. suffixes for numbers, so you do 3M damage instead of 3,000,000.  People might be confused a bit when they're doing 185Z damage, but they'll figure out through context that it's 1000 times more than 185E.  Any rounding errors are also likely to be not particularly important.

Oh, and it occurs to me that the resources you find might have to have a nonlinear scale as well, so that you are getting approximately the same relative reward for +100 levels at level 300 as you got for +10 levels at level 30.

The problem with this is exactly what was fixed with the patch, I believe. At first it makes sense-- why not have a level 800 area twice as hard as a level 400 area, if a level 8 area is twice as hard as a level 4 one?

The problem is that as your levels get progressively higher, they mean less and less. Going from civ level 3 to 4 is exciting because it's a big step. Going from 400 to 401 would mean nothing at all, and suddenly the XP bar becomes arbitrary compared to the level number itself! So eventually you start gaining "microlevels" and your perception of real levels becomes groups of 10, or 20, or 100... suddenly you don't say "I'm 50 percent to level 20!" and you start saying "I'm 25 levels away from level 400!"

I'm a huge fan of this new relative system. It makes it feel more like you're unlocking areas through your effort, like a more traditional Metroidvania game, rather than just boosting your numbers high enough to beat the other numbers!

One minor note that's almost on topic. The only thing I don't like is liberating resource spots that are waaay under my level. There's no challenge but it still needs to be done, and most of it is just walking across the surface. (Maybe there's a command to make NPCs do it for you at a certain level? I'm not sure.)

[x4000]

One minor note that's almost on topic. The only thing I don't like is liberating resource spots that are waaay under my level. There's no challenge but it still needs to be done, and most of it is just walking across the surface. (Maybe there's a command to make NPCs do it for you at a certain level? I'm not sure.)

That sort of thing is coming, in general, with the strategy game.  Right now you pretty much have to do everything on foot -- take out resource spots regardless of level, deal with rampaging monsters, etc.  That won't always be the case.

[Armanant]

I'm a fan of the change precisely because it means huge numbers don't get thrown around eventually.

I had a rant here, but after revising it half a dozen times I realized I should probably not rant 

[The Mimic]

One minor note that's almost on topic. The only thing I don't like is liberating resource spots that are waaay under my level. There's no challenge but it still needs to be done, and most of it is just walking across the surface. (Maybe there's a command to make NPCs do it for you at a certain level? I'm not sure.)

That sort of thing is coming, in general, with the strategy game.  Right now you pretty much have to do everything on foot -- take out resource spots regardless of level, deal with rampaging monsters, etc.  That won't always be the case.

Aw yeah. I'm super excited to hear that. The game has a feel of leading the people until they can lead themselves (to some degree) and I find it awesome.

[Penumbra]

I am almost thinking that your character's HP and MP should just be percentage bars. You have 100% HP and 100% MP. Spells and damage already reduce your life by a percentage, and potions and scrolls give you a % back.

If the bars just showed this, you wouldn't have to read the potions on how much they heal, or calculate how many times you can cast a spell. If fireball costs 5%, you have 20 shots. A potion 1 level below your civ's heals 25%, that's 5 more fireballs. Easy numbers.

Monsters couldn't all have that same bar, though, as different monsters need to take different amounts of health.  But I think it might be cool if a boss had 1200% life. Or something. That part I haven't got my mind around yet, but I do like simpler HP/MP/scroll/potion/spell, especially since the actual number doesn't matter

[x4000]

I thought about that -- but different characters have different amounts of health, too.  And things like the healing spells and attacks do NOT do a percentage of your health, there are real numbers under there.

[Penumbra]

More life means you can take more hits. More mana means you can cast more spells. Since the actual numbers don't matter to the player, could "extra life" instead be represented by "damage reduction" and "extra mana" be represented by "spell discount"?

10% more life would equate to, um, a 9% damage reduction? 

[x4000]

More life means you can take more hits. More mana means you can cast more spells.

And that's what happens, yeah.  If your character has 8000 HP, and mine has 4000 HP, you can take twice as many hits from most monsters.  If you have 3000 MP and I have 1500 MP, you can cast twice as many spells.  I don't know where you got the idea that all this stuff is percentage-based under the hood, but it's not.  It's just that the cost and attack power of spells and enemies decreases over time as your civ level goes up.  I really don't like the idea of going to a percentage-based system, I think it would be extraordinarily unclear to most players.

[Penumbra]

I apologize for making any assumptions about the back end. I realize that all the values are stored as numbers. I was (poorly) trying to express that damage and spell costs were effectively percentages of a whole.

It’s a calculation that I do in my head for all the costs and damages in the game already.  I also realize that I would be in the minority with finding these percentages easier to understand than flat numbers.

What about a little number in the spell slots that, like the quantity of potions I have left, represents the number of times I could cast that spell with my remaining mana?

[x4000]

No worries.  And that last one sounds like a great idea for a mantis suggestion.  I suspect some folks would prefer that be optional, but I'm not sure.

[TechSY730]

Hmm, maybe make it like the firepower display option in AI war, give an option to show percentage of MP consumed to be shown alongside the raw cost in the options screen.

But as mentioned, mantis would be a more appropriate discussion area for that.

[superking]

not sure how I feel about the new relative system, its made levelling feel much less rewarding.. I know technically it plays the same, but seeing the numbers get bigger is important!